Resources

This registry is searched in buyer language, so search the way you would describe the order, not the way a directory would file it. Four kinds of query work well:

• Product words: "hoodies", "knitted fabrics", "denim", "outerwear". Facilities are on record with the product types reported about them, and the search reads those.
• Brand names: type a brand whose quality you admire and see which facilities it works with. This is the fastest shortcut in the whole product.
• Materials: "merino", "organic cotton", "polyester". Material words narrow a category to the facilities that actually handle your fabric.
• Places: a country or a city, on its own or combined with any of the above, when logistics or duties push you toward a region.

What the tiers mean for you as a buyer

Facilities with no published evidence at all are not listed here. Absence does not mean a factory is bad; it means nothing has put it on record yet.

"Works with" is the strongest signal on any profile

Anyone can write "we serve leading European brands" on a website. But when a brand publishes a factory on its own supplier list, it is publishing the factories that made its goods, usually under transparency commitments and compiled from real purchase orders. That is why the verified brand relationships on a profile outweigh anything a factory says about itself.

Then let Match by Product do the ranking

Searching finds candidates; Match by Product ranks them. Give it your category and your real order volume, the actual number, even if it is 300, and it scores every facility in the registry against that brief. The result is a shortlist ordered by fit, with the evidence for each score in the open, so you spend your outreach on the five best candidates instead of the fifty nearest ones.

Three ways to move goods, and the tradeoff is always the same triangle: cost per unit, speed, and how much shipment you need before the mode makes sense.

For a first order in the low hundreds of light goods, the whole shipment often fits in a handful of cartons, and at that size the fixed costs of sea freight swamp its per-kilo savings. A 300-unit order of garments should usually just courier: ask the factory to quote shipped via courier, on their account or yours, and compare that single number against a forwarder quote before assuming freight is cheaper.

The four incoterms that matter to a small buyer

• EXW (Ex Works): you take over at the factory gate; transport, export clearance, everything after is your problem.
• FOB (Free On Board): the factory clears the goods for export and gets them loaded at its port; you handle the international leg and everything after.
• CIF (Cost, Insurance, Freight): the factory also pays freight and minimal insurance to your destination port; you still clear imports and arrange final delivery, without controlling how it shipped.
• DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): the factory quotes one number to your door, duties included.

Freight forwarders, in one paragraph

A freight forwarder is your booking agent for freight: they buy space on ships and planes, prepare the export and import paperwork, arrange customs clearance through a broker, and quote you door to door. You need one for any sea shipment and most air freight. You do not need one for express courier, which is the point of couriers.

Customs duties: the importer of record pays

That importer is you. Duty depends on the product's HS code and the origin and destination countries, so ask the factory which HS code they ship this product under and look it up in your country's tariff schedule before you finalize pricing. Couriers front the duties and bill you on delivery; freight shipments clear through your forwarder's broker. A DDP quote does not make duties disappear, it just buries them in the price.

A short note on packing

Ask for export-grade double-walled cartons, carton dimensions and gross weights on the packing list, units polybagged as your market requires, and carton labels that match the packing list. Every freight quote is priced on those dimensions and weights, so get them from the factory before asking anyone to quote.

Factories ignore most first emails because most first emails are easy to ignore: vague, volume-free, asking for a catalog. These are short, specific, and answerable in five minutes. Fill your details in once and every template merges live, ready to copy.

Subject: Production enquiry: [product], [quantity] units

Hello team,

I am [your name] and I run [brand], [one line on what you sell and to whom], based in [country].
Our store: [link]

I am looking to produce one product: [the product] [add the key spec]. First order volume is [your real number] units in 1 colorway(s), and I am aiming to have finished goods by [date].

Two questions:
1. Do you have stock fabric close to this spec, and in which colors?
2. What is your sample cost and lead time for this item, and is your quote FOB?

Attached is a one-page spec sheet with measurements, materials, and reference photos.

Thank you for your time,
[Your name]
[Brand], [website]

Why it works: it names who you are with a link that proves you are real, it commits to one product instead of five ideas, it states your real volume so the quote is one you can honor, it gives a target date so the factory can reject an impossible timeline immediately, and it asks exactly two questions that are easy to answer. The attachment matters: an email with no spec is a question the factory cannot price.

Follow-up cadence

You are writing across time zones to people whose first job is running production. Give a considered reply a few working days, then follow up once, politely, with the original email quoted. Around major production holidays, Chinese New Year above all, replies can pause for weeks; do not read silence in late January as rejection. But silence after a good email and one follow-up in normal weeks is an answer too: move down your shortlist.

No tech pack yet? A one-page spec sheet with measurements, materials, reference photos, and target quantity beats a beautiful deck, and it beats an empty email by more.

The minimum order quantity is the number that scares small buyers off, and it is the number least worth taking at face value. A published MOQ is an opening position, like a sticker price: it tells you where the factory would like the conversation to start, not where it has to end.

Fabric minimums vs sewing minimums: the real lever

For cut-and-sew goods, two different minimums hide inside one quoted number. The sewing line's minimum is about setup time for a new style, and it is often lower than you expect. The fabric minimum is the hard one: mills sell fabric in minimum runs per quality and per color, and a custom-dyed colorway is what pushes a quote into the thousands of units. If the factory holds stock fabric close to your spec, or you accept an available colorway, the effective minimum can fall dramatically. This is why "what is your MOQ?" is a weak question: it collapses two negotiable numbers into one fixed-sounding answer.

Levers that work at small volume

• Stock fabrics: sidestep the mill minimum entirely by building on fabric the factory already holds or can buy in small cuts.
• Fewer colorways: one style in one color is one fabric run; the same style in four colors is four. Cut colorways before you cut units.
• Staged orders: a small first run at a workable price, with a named reorder if it sells. Factories say yes to small runs that look like the start of a relationship.
• Sampling first: a paid sample is the cheapest way to show you are a real buyer, and it gives the factory a reason to sharpen the bulk quote.

Lines you can adapt

Every one of these works better when the run is easy to say yes to: one product, one colorway, stock materials, clear spec, real dates.

Every facility in this registry is on record through published evidence, and every fact on every profile links to where it came from and when it was retrieved. Where the record holds nothing for a field, the profile says No data yet instead of inventing a value.

Green in this interface always means verified proof. A green badge or a green source link is backed by evidence you can open. Green is never used for buttons, moods, or decoration.

Tiers describe one thing: how a facility got on record. Tier A means the facility itself confirmed its record. Tier B means it is on record through published evidence, like a brand's supplier list or a certification scheme. Tier C means not yet on record, and Tier C facilities are not listed here at all.

Registry data derives from Open Supply Hub , published under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence, which is why every record here can link back to its original source and why you can check our work.